Archive for October, 2009

“The taxi driver asks where St Philip’s church is. Which building. What’s going on there tonight. Once again have arrived early as it turns out.

Among others, using a slideshow of text and a loop station Matt Welton performs Dr Suss from his new book We needed coffee but we’d got ourselves convinced that the later we left it the better it would taste, and, as the country grew flatter and the roads became quiet and dusk began to colour the sky, you could guess from the way we retuned the radio and unfolded the map or commented on the view that the tang of determination had overtaken our thoughts, and when, fidgety and untalkative but almost home, we drew up outside the all-night restaurant, it felt like we might just stay in the car, listening to the engine and the gentle sound of the wind, available from Carcanet.

Something weird happens. St Philip’s Church in Salford doesn’t look like any other building nearby. From their website it’s Greek style, designed by Sir Robert Smirke in 1825. The view from Chapel Street is straight on to the ‘bow-fronted porch with ionic colonnade and balustraded parapet and bell tower above.’ Alternately as Tom Jenks points out there’s a kind of Silent Running vibe to the Geoffrey Manton building at MMU, only perhaps more deserted even with people in it. We are the last people drifting in this forgotten ship.”

Like this:

“You have been raised in an unsane culture. Driving that unsanity is a slavery to words. For sanity, you must learn to attend to reality outside yourself. The woods and the trees are real. To discuss them adequately, you must learn to communicate with clarity. That means understanding the confusions of language that are rife in western culture.